The document discusses teachers' and learners' perspectives on autonomy in language learning. It begins by introducing the concept of personal autonomy from a philosophical perspective, referring to an individual's free choice of goals and ability to direct their own life. It then explores teachers' perspectives, which focus on classroom arrangements and established curricula, while learners' perspectives consider learning in relation to their broader lives. The document concludes by arguing that autonomy in learning is grounded in the idea of personal autonomy but that teachers and learners may have differing or incomplete views of what autonomy requires.

1. Teachers' and learners' perspectives on autonomy
The author: Phil Benson
Hong Kong Institute of Education
Group 9
Presenter : Nguyễn Ngọc An

2. GENERAL PRESENTATION
PART 1: Introduction
PART 2: Personal autonomy
PART 3: Autonomy in learning
The teacher’s perspectives
The learner’s perspectives
PART 4: Conclusion

3. PART 1: Introduction
1. In the literature on
language teaching and
learning, there are many
variations upon the basic idea
of autonomy. The problem is to
explain how these different
ways of representing autonomy
and putting it into practice may
be linked to broader
political, ideological or
philosophical outlooks.

4. PART 1: Introduction
2. According to Phil
Benson, the term “ perspective
” refers to a way of viewing a
phenomenon that is conditioned
both by an individual's position
in a power-inflected role
relationship and by the
experience that the individual
acquires within this
relationship.

5. PART 1: Introduction
3. From the teachers'
perspective, autonomy:
+ Primarily concerned with
institutional and classroom
learning arrangements within
established curricula.
+ Tending to imply the
learner taking control of
arrangements whose underlying
legitimacy is unquestioned.

6. PART 1: Introduction
4. From the learners'
perspective, autonomy:
primarily concerned
with learning, in a much
broader sense, and its
relationship to their lives
beyond the classroom

7. PART 1: Introduction
5. The idea of autonomy
in language learning is
often represented as a
radically learn-er-centred
idea and it has evolved
over the past thirty years.

8. PART 1: Introduction
6. In this lesson, the author (Phil Benson) will focus
on :
+ The liberal concept of personal autonomy' as it is
currently understood in the field of moral and political
philosophy.
+ Personal autonomy gives both teachers and
learners an interest in autonomy in language learning.
+ The investigations of the empirical validity of
these assumptions by exploring teach-ers' and
learners' interests in autonomy in greater depth.

9. PART 2: Personal autonomy
"the free choice of goals and relations as an essential
ingredient of individual well-being"
(Raz 1986: 369)
 defining the senses in which a liberal society
should value and protect individual freedom.
 a meaningful conception of freedom must be
based on the idea of autonomy as a characteristic of
individual lives.
(Wall ,2003: 307-308)

10. PART 2: Personal autonomy
Autonomy does
not, therefore, imply
freedom of action on any
given occasion, but rather a
more general idea that the
individual should "freely
direct the course of his or
her own life" (Young 1986:
19).

11. PART 2: Personal autonomy
According to Wall (2003: 308), to realize autonomy, one
needs several things:
(1) the capacity
to form complex
intentions and to  refer to mental capacities and virtues
sustain
commitments

12. PART 2: Personal autonomy
(2) the independence
necessary to chart one's
own course through life  refers to one's relations
and to develop one's with other per-sons who
own under-standing of could exercise power over
what is valuable and one
worth doing

13. PART 2: Personal autonomy
(3) the self-
consciousness
and vigor  refer to mental
necessary to take capacities and
virtues
control of one's
affairs

14. PART 2: Personal autonomy
(4) access to an
environment that
 refers to the
provides one with a environment in which
wide range of one lives
valuable options

15. PART 2: Personal autonomy
- Autonomy requires some degree of freedom from
two basic kinds of constraints: internal and exter-nal.
- In regard to internal constraints, individuals must
acquire certain psychological capacities (Elements 1
and 3).
- In regard to external constraints, there must be some
degree of freedom from other-direction (Element 2)
and an environment in which meaningful options are
made available (Element 4).

16. PART 2: Personal autonomy
- Personal autonomy is, in this sense, an attribute of
the socially-constituted individual.
- This conception of personal autonomy constitutes the
fundamental ground for the idea of 'autonomy in
learning'.
 The liberal-humanist view strongly implies that
we must learn to be autonomous, but it does not
specify the kind of learning required

17. PART 3: Autonomy in learning
Theory of autonomy in language learning draws its
meaning for the term „autonomy‟ from the concept of
personal autonomy
QUESTIONS:
1. What kinds of learning best lead towards the goal
of personal autonomy?
2. What can teachers do to help learners move towards
the goal of personal autonomy?
3. What can learners do to help themselves move
towards the goal of personal autonomy?

18. PART 3: Autonomy in learning
A. The teacher’s perspectives
- Be manifested in a number of ways in the literature
on autonomy in learning
- Focusing on the ways in which we conceptualize
autonomy in learning in terms of dimensions of
capacity and situational freedom
- They are both capable of leading autonomous lives
and free to do so

19. PART 3: Autonomy in learning
- The term 'autonomy' is used to refer either to a
persons capacity to lead such a life or to some
condition of situational freedom that facilitates the
exercise of this capacity.
-Boud (1981: 30) asks about the nature of autonomy as
a goal of education:
 "Is it to produce an autonomous person - a product-
oriented approach - or is it to introduce activities
which re-quire students to act autonomously - a
process-oriented approach?”

20. PART 3: Autonomy in learning
- Holec's (1981: 3) widely quoted definition of
autonomy as the "ability" to take charge of one's own
learning ran somewhat against the grain of the times.
- Autonomous learners : persons who possess both the
capacity and the freedom to steer their own learning in
the direction of personal autonomy.

21. PART 3: Autonomy in learning
1. Benson (1997) : three different "versions" of
autonomy in learning
(technical, psycho-logical and political)
2. Benson (2001) : three "levels of control" over
learning (concerned with learning
management, cog-nitive processing and the
content of learning)

22. PART 3: Autonomy in learning
3. Littlewood (1999: 75) : a distinction
between "proactive" and "reactive"
autonomy based on two levels of self-
regulation
4. Smith (2003a: 130-132): distinction
between "strong" and "weak" pedagogies
for autonomy

23. PART 3: Autonomy in learning
B. The learner’s perspectives:
The learner's perspective on autonomy in learning is related to
the question:
1. What can I do in my learning to help myself towards the
goal of per-sonal autonomy?
2. What can learners do to help themselves move towards the
goal of personal autonomy?
Learn-ers' perspectives on autonomy are always
contextualized within particular experi-ences of learning and
life.

24. PART 4: Conclusion
-We should work towards a more complex view of the
requirements for autonomy and of the relationship
between autonomy in learning and autonomy in life.
- The teacher's perspective on autonomy may involve
a degree of self-deception, in which concerns for our
own autonomy may find expression in concerns for
the autonomy of our learners.

25. PART 4: Conclusion
-The idea of autonomy in learning is grounded in the
liberal-hu-manist conception of personal autonomy.
- We should perhaps pay more attention to the
literature on autonomy beyond ourfield in order to
refine and make explicit the underlying conceptions of
autonomy with which we work.

26. THANKS
FOR
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LISTENING
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